Its my pleasure to share Susan's story with you. Her first guest posting.
We all agree that throughout history, equal rights for women have been hard to come by. I won't digress all the way back to Susan B. Anthony but possibly back to my first memories.
At the beginning of World War II, with men being drafted to the fight on both sides of the globe, women - housewives - were inundated with propaganda to serve the war effort. With the men gone fighting, women were the only pool available for a workforce badly in need of workers to build aircraft and munitions.
My mother-in-law, at 17, worked in an aircraft factory riveting the nose cone onto the B-17 bombers - a true Rosie the Riveter. These women, these housewives, left their children in the care of others and joined what had been a male-dominated world by the thousands to help this country's war effort. Some, for the first time, earned the money that fed and clothed their family, made decisions based on their own thoughts and experiences - were looked upon by others in society as powerful contributors to a cause of immense importance.
Then the war ended, and men returned home to their lives and jobs. Women were displaced, forced back into low-paying menial positions or back into the kitchens. Women who had held positions and performed tasks normally relegated to their men, now found themselves devalued. And for some it was a rough adjustment.
One of my first memories was of my mother working in her flower garden in a pair of pedal-pushers. In fact, other than church on Sunday, my mother pretty much lived in slacks. She was a southern lady, having been born in a small town in Mississippi at the height of the depression, and thanks to my father's wishes, was a stay-at-home wife. She worked in the Camp Shelby cantina during the war and a small mercantile in my father's home town after they married.
But as soon as I was born, she took her "rightful" place as wife and mother. And as all the other women of her acquaintance tried to find their places in this changing America. Television, a broad new medium, was changing the face of how people viewed the roles of television families.
Ozzie & Harriet, Donna Reed and yes June Cleaver and her ubiquitous pearls, were showing America that it was the man of the household who was the true decision maker. The little woman got into adventures every week but it was always the strong, silent hubby that brought her back to earth and reminded her of the bond of family.
Looking back as an older person, I can't help but wonder what the women of that time - those same women who had given selflessly of their time, and sometimes their health, must have thought about the devaluation of their role in the household. It seemed that the women of that time had to be diminished in importance to make way for men returning home from war.
It's rather ironic that at a horrific juncture in our history, women at last found the equality they had been striving for, only to have it taken away so that men could be returned to their previous positions of power.
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If I may, I would like to quote from a book that I am reading called "The Invitation" written by Oriah which to quote her is, "a declaration of intent, a map into the longing of the soul, the desire to live passionately, face-to-face with ourselves and skin-to-skin with the world around us..." The part I will refer to goes back to a different time and to a profound statement regarding the placating of the feminine...She quotes," My grandfather, Baba stood when a woman came into the room, quietly, confidently, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The woman could be young or old, pretty or plain, the next door neighbor or his sister-in-law. It didn't matter. My father, a man caught between two eras, stood some of the time. My brother, as he grew to manhood, never stood. Our generation shunned the social graces as empty gestures devoid of any real meaning, separated from honorable intent, empty movements designed to placate those denied real power in their lives. What honoring of feminine could there be in the rising from a chair if, at the same time, the community condoned a man beating his wife or forbidding her work of her own? Did Baba feel the old stirrings of the male warrior in his blood, the one who recognized, honored and cherished the woman of his tribe as life-givers, beings who in the very shape of belly and breast held the image of life? Did he mean to salute life and place himself at her service, or was he merely being polite, following rules long since meaningless? I don't know. Still, when I enter a room and a man stands until I am seated, I feel a part of myself respond, sensing what it might be like to live where what we offer, the place we hold that is larger than ourselves, is seen and valued. I feel how this calls me, not to deny my humanness, but to remember my place in things, to rise and meet the best in myself, and offer it to my people, to be worthy of being Woman, Life-Giver, Warrior, Mother, Sister, Grandmother, Dreamer, Priestess..." It was profound to me because I believe women cannot ask of others what they do not feel within their own being...no matter what we call it, being love, equality, respect or a sense of our own power.It is in coming together, as women, that brings support to each one of us in this journey and transformation into owning our right to stand out, and to stand alone if we choose; and to freely access the power and strength of our divine feminine.
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